While we are living in a digital era, American manufacturers exported $772 billion of goods to other nations in 2016. That accounted for 60 percent of the nation’s exports that year (the latest year for which data is available).
Total manufacturing sales, including products sold within the United States, topped $5 trillion.
Even with growing automation, it takes a lot of people to manufacture all of those goods. Census data shows that U.S. manufacturers employed 11.6 million people who are paid an average of $57,266 a year. Among those workers 25 or older, 30% had a bachelor’s degree from college.
In three states — Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa — manufacturing jobs are held by more than 7.5 percent of the working-age population.
Each weekday, Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day explores interesting and newsworthy topics at the intersection of culture, politics, and technology. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of the Rasmussen Media Group. He is the author of "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," "In Search of Self-Governance," and "The People’s Money: How Voters Will Balance the Budget and Eliminate the Federal Debt." Read more reports from Scott Rasmussen — Click Here Now.
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